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A farewell to entropy : statistical thermodynamics based on information : S=logW /

"The principal message of this book is that thermodynamics and statistical mechanics will benefit from replacing the unfortunate, misleading and mysterious term "entropy" with a more familiar, meaningful and appropriate term such as information, missing information or uncertainty. Thi...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Clasificación:Libro Electrónico
Autor principal: Ben-Naim, Arieh, 1934-
Formato: Electrónico eBook
Idioma:Inglés
Publicado: Hackensack, N.J. : World Scientific, ©2008.
Temas:
Acceso en línea:Texto completo
Tabla de Contenidos:
  • 1. Introduction
  • A brief history of temperature and entropy
  • The association of entropy with disorder
  • The association of entropy with missing information
  • 2. Elements of probability theory
  • Introduction
  • The axiomatic approach
  • The classical definition
  • The relative frequency definition
  • Independent events and conditional probability
  • Bayes' Theorem
  • Random variables, average, variance and correlation
  • Some specific distributions
  • Generating functions
  • The law of large numbers
  • 3. Elements of information theory
  • A qualitative introduction to information theory
  • Definition of Shannon's information and its properties
  • The various interpretations of the quantity H
  • The assignment of probabilities by the maximum uncertainty principle
  • The missing information and the average number of binary questions needed to acquire it
  • The false positive problem, revisited
  • The urn problem, revisited
  • 4. Transition from the general MI to the thermodynamic MI
  • MI in binding systems: one kind of information
  • Some simple processes in binding systems
  • MI in an ideal gas system: two kinds of information. The Sackur-Tetrode Equation
  • Comments
  • 5. The structure of the foundations of statistical thermodynamics
  • The isolated system; the micro-canonical ensemble
  • System in a constant temperature; The canonical ensemble
  • The classical analog of the canonical partition function
  • The re-interpretation of the Sackur-Tetrode expression from informational considerations
  • Identifying the parameter ß for an ideal gas
  • Systems at constant temperature and chemical potential; The grand canonical ensemble
  • Systems at constant temperature and pressure; The isothermal isobaric ensemble
  • The mutual information due to intermolecular interactions
  • 6. Some simple applications
  • Expansion of an ideal gas
  • Pure, reversible mixing; The first illusion
  • Pure assimilation process; The second illusion
  • Irreversible process of demixing coupled with expansion
  • Reversible assimilation coupled with expansion
  • Reflections on the processes of mixing and assimilation
  • A pure spontaneous deassimilation process
  • A process involving only change in the momentum distribution
  • A process involving change in the intermolecular interaction energy
  • Some baffling experiments
  • The second law of thermodynamics
  • Appendices
  • A: Newton's binomial theorem and some useful identities involving binomial coefficients
  • B: The total number of states in the Fermi-Dirac and the Bose-Einstein statistics
  • C: Pair and triplet independence between events
  • D: Proof of the inequality R (X, Y) <̲ 1 for the correlation coefficient
  • E: The Stirling approximation
  • F: Proof of the form of the function H
  • G: The method of Lagrange undetermined multipliers
  • H: Some inequalities for concave functions
  • The MI for the continuous case
  • J: Identical and indistinguishable (ID) particles
  • The equivalence of the Boltzmann's and Jaynes' procedures to obtain the fundamental distribution of the canonical ensemble
  • L: An alternative derivation of the Sackur-Tetrode equation
  • M: Labeling and un-labeling of particles
  • N: Replacing a sum by its maximal term
  • O: The Gibbs paradox (GP)
  • P: The solution to the three prisoners' problem.